Color
by yaksa
Summary: Four white walls and one individual dressed in black. After years, Zim finally gives up something he's been hiding. Hatred will bend at the end of an era. Oneshot.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Invader Zim. A much more awesome individual does, as well as a company that shouldn't.

**neoKOS-MOS: **Finally broke down and started writing for IZ. The following is not exactly coherently written, but I think it's halfway decent. One-shot deathfic. Dark and demented, and possibly interpreted as ZADR for one looking for such a thing. No like, no read. Simple as that.

**Color**

He hated seeing him, hated every day when he would walk into the prison and make his way through the sterile, cold halls to the one tiny room that Zim was never allowed to leave. And every time, the Irken would look up at him with that tragically sad stare. It made Dib want to hit him, shake him until his alien spine snapped, and so he wouldn't have to deal with this anymore.

But, same as always, he pulled up to the security check-in and showed the five armed guards his ID. Park, walk the short distance between the lot and the door to the institution. Because, it wasn't a prison, it was an institution. For prisoners. Did he _ever_ hate that political correctness. Dib kicked at the door, hating himself for always coming here. He brushed past the front desk, the security behind it, waving his badge and scowling at anyone who tried to get up and hinder his progress. No way he would be forced to stay in this horrible place for even longer.

The elevator and that stupid, mindless music. He clenched his hands, embedded in the pockets of his coat, until the doors slid open again and he could race away from the dreadful speakers that pumped it out. Nurses swept out of his way. They were as annoyed at his presence as he was, but they had learned to get out of his way and not ask him to be more polite or to slow down. He passed the day room, as they called it, hearing the horror of the rest of the "patients" that were inside. Stupid things that didn't seem to realize that they were here because they had done horrible things, or because they were simply too interesting to be let go.

And then he came to a stop in front of the door. 692. Those three numbers would be forever engraved in his mind. No window even, to let the staff look inside to make sure the person within was still there. Even that was denied this prisoner. He was special.

Dib swiped the key card through the lock to the side, waited for the thing to beep him entrance before his hand clasped around the handle and tugged it open. Crimson. Always that same crimson stare, as if Zim never looked away from the door. The alien blinked as he stepped inside and shut the door behind him again.

"Are you ready to give up yet?" he asked. No niceties anymore, just straight to the point. It had been rehearsed too many times for that.

Zim glanced away. Even that seemed rehearsed, and it made Dib want to slap him for it. "I've already said that I can't tell them. I don't even remember it anymore."

A ruffle of cloth, and he moved over to stand next to the bed, his height even more as Zim was sitting at the moment. "Yeah. Except that's not the answer they're looking for, and you know it."

"What do you want me to do, Dib-human?" He stood on the bed, that height only leaving an inch between the tops of their heads. "Lie? I have, and they hurt me every time I try. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of this whole ordeal."

_He_ was tired? Dib rolled his eyes, angry, and turned away, kicking the bed hard enough to send it skidding an inch. "You know what, Zim? I don't even care anymore. You can stay here the rest of your life and rot. I don't care. I just want this to end. I hate this place, and I hate that you're the reason I always have to come back."

The alien collapsed, fell back down onto the bed as if he had deflated. He was so tiny, looked even more so because of the stark whiteness of the room, the whiteness of the clothes he was forced to wear and all the furniture that was larger than he was. It was an eight-by-eight cell of windowless walls and four prying white cameras in each corner.

Dib had seen him shrink over the years. He had been bigger, he knew, when he had first turned himself in. Everything they had done to him had made him even smaller, and it was sickening to see how he succumbed to it.

"I don't know where it is." Zim offered exhaustedly. He held up a hand and watched as the sterile white sleeve fell loosely down his thin green arm.

Dib turned away, set his back to the bed and stared a hole in the wall. "Yeah. Of course. I'll see you tomorrow, then."

Two steps and he was at the door. Hand on the handle, he twisted it open only to find the hem of his coat trapped in something. A glance back, and he saw that it was Zim, the black fabric clutched pitifully in one three-digit hand.

"Don't go yet, human. You keep leaving sooner and sooner. Eventually you won't even come at all."

"That's the idea," he hissed over a shoulder, knuckles going white as he clutched the handle. But something in that loose hold behind him kept him rooted to the spot.

Zim's eyes fell again, down to Dib's boots. The Irken's eyes never seemed to leave him when he came. "You're the only thing I ever see that has color anymore. I hate white. It makes me feel dead inside."

Dib stopped, blinking but still frozen in place. The hand released it's hold on his coat, and the fabric fluttered down. Zim didn't look up, and he slowly turned back and sat on the bed, eyes cast into the wall.

This was the thing he hated the most. He had learned to deal with Zim's shrunken stature, his shrunken personality. Even with the apathy and depression that was so un-Zim-like. He hated it when the Irken begged him to stay, if only to offer some sort of comfort to the solitude. Because it was Zim's fault that he was here.

He sighed, hand falling from the handle. The door closed again with a sucking sound, airtight seal. His boots clumped softly on the white tile floor and he sat down next to Zim. Hadn't done this in a while. "Sorry."

The alien sniffed, an acknowledgment of the statement. Neither of them spoke for a while, both staring off at their own portions of the room, each in a different train of though. And then Zim spoke again, his voice less than a whisper.

"I've been thinking about it. Hard, over the past few days. I have to get out of this room, or I'm going to go insane."

"You are insane, Zim. Just like me. Why do you think I come and visit you every day? We're two of a kind."

He laughed, a cold, sad sound. "I thought it was because no one else could make me talk like you could."

Dib rolled his eyes, smoothing a hand blindly over the white sheets of the bed. "You can't leave the room, Zim. You're in jail, remember."

"Shhh. You're not supposed to say that." Sarcasm hissed into the silence. "It's an institution, remember?"

"Screw that, Zim." He turned in one jagged motion and finally looked the Irken in the face. "You're in here because they want to know the location you sent all that data to before they stuffed you in here. You say you don't know, and I believe you, but they don't. They don't think it's that easy to just forget."

Another stark laugh. "Of course, because I have a metal brain and they don't. But it wasn't that simple, human."

"Yeah, well why don't you enlighten me? It's been three years, and I still don't have all the details in place."

Zim glanced away, eyes falling to the one corner that was cast in shadow, a trick of the light as it fell over the desk. Shadow, blackness in the white. "I don't know where it is."

Dib's anger flared, and he lunged forward and pinned Zim roughly to the bed. Scarlet eyes widened in fear as he crushed the Irken into the hard mattress, hoping to hurt him. Hands squeezed on his delicate shoulders, so strongly that he felt the bones within warping. One knee pressed into his stomach, and the alien moaned in pain.

In disgust, Dib ripped himself away and walked across the room, sitting on the desk, the spot where he could fix that trick of the light and take away Zim's precious corner of shadow. There wasn't even any fight in the Irken anymore, he was so weak. He didn't even fight back when Dib hit him.

There was pain in his voice as he spoke. "I sent it out a random. I don't know where it went. I've been trying to calculate it, but something about this room makes my mind dead. I can't even think straight."

Dib glanced over, was disgusted as he saw that the alien was crying, those pale blue tears running in streaks from his eyes. Zim didn't cry. What was his problem?

"Stop that." His voice was grating and cruel, a barked order.

Zim stiffened and clenched his eyes shut, wiping at his face with that horrid white sleeve. A moment later he looked up, almost back to a normal composure. "You didn't have to hurt me."

"You made me angry. I hate you sometimes, Zim."

The alien nodded, not even trying to defend himself. It was all so pitiful, it disgusted him.

Dib stood again and turned toward the door. "If you're not gonna tell me direct coordinates, I'm leaving. I hate this place."

"No, please. Just a few more minutes. Don't leave me alone." Those sad scarlet eyes pleaded with him.

"I'm sick of this, Zim." His fingers wrapped around the door handle again, twisting.

"143' 287'' 65'''." Three numbers spoken out of desperation. Dib turned back again, more surprised than disgusted. Zim had jumped up and was standing on the floor, hands fluttering within their sleeves.

"What?"

"143' 287'' 65'''. I said I'd been thinking about it. Maybe the message went there."

"Are you sure this time?" He released the handle again, another sucking sound as the door closed.

Zim shrugged. He looked so small. "How many coordinates have I given?"

"I don't know. Whatever. Do you have some paper?"

The Irken shook his head. Of course not. What could he write on it with? Everything was white in this room. White ink on white paper didn't work. Dib remembered something and reached into his pocket, pulling out the pad of paper he always carried. He sat down in the chair, the chair that was his size, not Zim's, and flipped it open a few pages.

"Say it again," he asked, and scratched down the numbers as Zim recited them. He watched them for a moment before moving to flip the pad closed again.

"Wait." Zim's green hand shot out and stopped him, pulling at the paper and the pencil he held in his own. "Let me have a sheet."

Dib frowned but nodded, watching as the Irken flipped through the book and looked over the sketches and calculations that were in there, leftovers of his occasional dabbles in the para-science he still loved so much. Crimson eyes flicked up as he paused at the drawing of the loch ness monster. Dib nodded and Zim tore the sheet out, holding it as if it were a dream. The human snatched his things back again, slipping them into his pocket as he turned to the door for the third time.

"Dib?" The alien asked, and he turned back to meet his gaze.

"What now?"

"Will they kill me if they find it?" He clutched the drawing in one hand, the preciously black graphite smudging a little on his skin.

"Yeah. Probably."

"Will you be there when they do it?"

He stared at the alien, a sick feeling spreading in his stomach at the thought. "Why? Would you want me to?"

Zim seemed to contemplate this for a moment, and then nodded.

"Fine. Then I'll be there."

"Will you come and see me tomorrow? Even if those are the coordinates?"

Dib frowned, shaking his head. "You know I hate this place, Zim."

"Would you come anyway? I think I'd go crazy if you didn't, if I didn't get some relief from this horrible place."

"What would it matter? If these are the coordinates, you'll be dead soon enough."

Zim seemed even more hollow, empty as he watched Dib pull the door open and step out.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Zim."

The door closed with a sucking sound, airtight seal.

-

Through the whole drive back to the lab, a scene burned into his brain. Zim, led into the room, the walls arching up in a circle, hiding the scientists that sat above to watch. They would strap him to the table, get all the equipment ready as someone, probably his dad, gave the pep talk that excited the scientists into a sick anticipation.

Why had he asked him to come? To serve as some sort of punishment for all the planning he had done more than a decade before? Dib sighed in the silence of his car. His black car that was so starkly different from Zim's white room. A glance to the right, to the pad of paper that sat open next to him on the passenger seat. The coordinates burned up at him. They would be the last piece of the puzzle that was Zim's life in this cold and angry world. And a puzzle that was complete wasn't useful anymore.

He could just throw them away, pretend they had never been given. Something deep inside of him screamed that fact desperately into his mind, but Dib ignored it. Besides, the cameras in the room knew that he had another of Zim's attempts to right the wrong he had done three years ago. And what would the point be of trying to ignore it anyway? Zim hated that room, and he would never get out of it unless he was right.

Dib pulled into his dad's lab, passing through a mimicry of the security he had gone through to get to Zim. That's all his life was, a bunch of secrets that needed to guarded and hidden away from the rest of the world. It made him sick.

He checked in and ran the coordinates up to the room he always brought them to. His dad was waiting for him there, a skeptically happy look hidden behind the goggles. He took the sheet of paper wordlessly from his son and took it across the room to the telescope computer. It only took a few minutes, and Dib watched as the room lit up in an excited array as the scientists realized that they had finally found the right coordinates. Now they could retrieve that information that was so vital to the human race. Now they could exterminate the horrible alien that had put them in this crisis to begin with.

Dib turned away in disgust. What did they know? The data was probably safer out there anyway. All this signaled was Zim's death. What a waste. They could have learned more if they had searched his brain, instead of the sky.

-

He was there the next day, though not for the reason either of them had expected. Those ecstatic scientists were eager to get rid of the creature that had tormented them over all these years. They wanted to cut him up and see what made him tick. They had waited long enough.

Dib was there as the men in white coats led the white clad alien out of the institution. He was handcuffed, handcuffs for children locked over his slender wrists. As soon as they left the building, he had watched as Zim's scarlet eyes had flicked over the landscape, desperate for something other than the white he had lived with for so long. But it had snowed. Dib had been swearing when he'd woken up and found the ground blanketed in a thick, soft layer of white. Even the sky was white, clouds reflecting the surface below them.

Zim's eyes fell, he shrunk into himself again as he saw nothing, his tiny feet shuffling through the thick snow. Dib's hands clenched in his pockets as he realized that they hadn't even given him any shoes to wear.

There were other scientists that had come to see the alien moved, each clad in one of their sickly white lab coats. Dib scowled at them, his black boots grinding through the snow as he approached the white transportation car, and the men that were leading Zim.

"I'll sit in with him," he told them, leaving no room for argument.

Zim was shoved in first, too fast and he fell forward on the seat as he lost his balance. Dib slid in next to him before the men could try to buckle the Irken in, pulling the door behind him.

The alien righted himself and sat in the seat. Even the inside of the car was white. Dib strapped him in, gentle movements that weren't followed by those downcast, sullen crimson eyes.

"Sorry it snowed," he told him, strapping himself in and watching Zim.

The Irken nodded and reached out to wrap his hands around his freezing feet. Dib watched for a moment before unclicking his seat belt and scooting over to sit directly next to Zim. Those red eyes flicked up, and he unstrapped Zim and pulled him into his lap, wrapping the trench coat around the both of them to keep warm. He slid into Zim's seat as the car pulled away.

"I was afraid you wouldn't come," the Irken whispered, his gaze cast sadly out the window. "I thought I'd be lost in the white again."

That confused him, but Dib stayed silent, feeling the warmth seep back into Zim's body. Lost in the white. Probably all the lab coats and sterile interiors of the building they were heading toward.

Minutes ticked past. Neither of them spoke, both lost in the white blizzard of outside. What a waste. Even at the end of his life, Zim was trapped. No color, no freedom, no hope. Black clad arms tightened slightly around the white clad body.

As they pulled up to Membrane Labs, Dib felt Zim tremble. He looked down and saw the Irken's terrified expression, red eyes wide and antennae tucked back.

"I don't want to die," he whispered as the door was pulled open and the white coats grabbed him again, leading him barefoot through the snow.

The human sprang out of the car as well, slamming the door shut and moving to run after Zim. He couldn't let him die. Not like this. Zim's death was to he his responsibility, and his alone. But a hand on his elbow restrained him, his father's eyes through the goggles were angry and excited all at once.

"The viewing room is that way, son."

The man walked off to do his duty in the autopsy. Dib watched him go, unmoving until he had disappeared behind the big white door, and then made his way in the direction his father had pointed.

Amphitheater. Somewhere you went to be entertained, to watch something that enlightened you. He sat on one of the ugly colorless benches and peered down at the round room below. Maybe for the rest of them, the sick human beings that had crowded in to see the first and only alien autopsy of the century. Dib felt sick to his stomach.

A minute passed before the nurses filed into the room below, the one above packed with faces behind white masks. They set up the scalpels and saws and clamps and all the gruesome instruments that would be used in the thing to come. And the table in the middle of the room, cold and cruel and white. Always white. His heart sunk when Zim was led into the room, pulled gracelessly up onto the table and strapped down. Those two terrified crimson eyes screamed out to him, latched onto his own brown ones and held on.

Membrane filed into the room, along with his trusty second man, Simmons, and another scientist that Dib recognized but whose name he could not place. His dad launched into a speech, one he had probably had prepared years in advance, all in anticipation of this day. Dib's eyes were not drawn to the figures clad in white, but to Zim, lying strapped to the table as they cut his prison clothes off. And then he looked even smaller.

The speech ended. The scientists approached the table. Zim watched in horror as a scalpel was lifted from the tray, held poised above his chest as Membrane paused to start. Dib suddenly felt more sick. They were going to do it to him while he was still alive. He stood, turned to leave.

"No!"

The panic in that one word made him turn back, and he realized that it hadn't been from the first cut, as the cold metal hadn't bit into Zim's chest yet. It was from Dib's attempt to leave. His eyes locked with that red gaze again, and he finally understood. He didn't want to be alone in his death like he'd been alone for so long.

_Be my color for me,_ those lips mouthed as the blade sliced in.

Dib sat, watched. Watched sickly as they spread his delicate ribcage and poked at his organs. Sliced into those as well. Zim's face contorted in pain, agony. He felt sick. Dib closed his eyes. He couldn't watch. But he had to, and he opened them again. Watched as the color seeped out of Zim's eyes and as he went limp.

Dib went limp as well as he realized that the alien was dead. He slumped forward against the ledge of the amphitheater, biting back the urge to throw up as tears sprung to his eyes. It wasn't right. It shouldn't have been like that. It was all too cruel and cold.

He should have worn something other than black. He should have worn blue or red or green. A color fitting to die to. Black was for after death, not during it.

Dib stood up and left. He couldn't watch the rest. It was already over, anyway.

He'd never wear another color again.

-

**neoKOS-MOS:** Reviews are nice. If you feel you have to flame me, have the decency to do it anonymously so that I can delete it. Thanks for reading.


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